A racing magnate faces a big test

 

   After his work in House of Gucci, you might have thought that Adam Driver wouldn't want to play any more Italians. One English-speaking Italian might be enough for any career.

 But here he is as Enzo Ferrari, the Italian sports car entrepreneur who suffers from the loss of a beloved 24-year-old son, neglects his wife (Penelope Cruz), and carries on a long-standing affair with a younger woman (Shailene Woodley) with whom he has another son.  

   And, then, there's racing.

   Ferrari affords director Michael Mann the opportunity to recreate the Mille Miglia, a grueling 1,500-kilometer race that gives the movie its most harrowing twist.

  The drivers in Ferrari reminded me of bullfighters -- proud, arrogant men who know they're risking their lives.

   Once a driver himself, Ferrari encourages his drivers not to waver at crucial points in a race, even when two cars are trying to make the same turn. He makes it seem as if their manhood is on the line.

   That's tough stuff, and as Driver plays him, Ferrari steels himself against paying an emotional price for any damage that might result from his single-minded commitment to winning. 

   Mann's movie unfolds during three months of 1957, a year in which Ferrari battled to save his company from bankruptcy while dealing with an embittered wife who had leverage over him. She owned half of his company.

  With another fine performance, Cruz creates a character who treats her wandering husband with simmering contempt that threatens boil into rage. No patsy, Cruz's Laura also wants to protect her stake in the company.  

   Ferrari eventually learns that he'll have to shed his speed-boutique mentality and sell a minimum of 400 cars per year to keep his company on the road. Since its founding in 1947,  Ferrari had been selling a few cars a year to well-heeled buyers.

    Lacking capital, Ferrari assays what he must risk to find big-time backing, at one point from Ford. Business and sport converge. To secure  financing, Ferrari also believes he must win the Mille Miglia.

    Mann (Collateral and The Insider) gained prominence with TV's Miami Vice. Early movies such as Thief  (1981) and Manhunter (1986) were small gems. Many count Mann's Heat (1995) among their favorite movies.

     Mann resists the temptation to over-stylize Ferrari, and in Driver, he finds an actor who communicates the torment beneath Ferrari's composed facade. Ferrari knows he has subordinated other elements in his life to his racing obsession.

     To his credit, Mann also shows a softer side Ferrari mostly keeps hidden. We see it in tender scenes between Ferrari and his young son, a boy Laura insists cannot inherit the Ferrari name until she dies, another source of contention.

    The racing sequences are exciting but Mann backs them up with plenty of off-the-track intrigue.

    More than a pure racing movie and less than a comprehensive bio-pic, Ferrari focuses on a man who’s trying to hold his life and company together. He and others pay a price for his efforts.

    Ferrari may hit an occasional bump, but Mann, now 80, knows where to find the dramatic fuel that keeps his movie  running.

Topical subject turns tedious in 'Blackhat'

Michael Mann's latest suffers from a bland performance by Chris Hemsworth and an insistently one-note tone.

We're in that January moment when last year's prestige releases still are making their way around much of the country, boosted by this week's Academy Award nominations. Put another way, January is not exactly prime time for new movies.

No wonder, then, that director Michael Mann's misbegotten Blackhat has slipped into the mix.

A numbed-out thriller about computer hacking, Blackhat promises topical urgency, but winds up feeling disconnected from a reality we've come to know all too well from recent headlines. (See stories about the great SONY hacking).

Working from a screenplay by Morgan Davis Foehl, Mann delivers a one-note effort that matches most of the movie's one-note performances.

Chris Hemsworth -- the Australian actor of Thor fame -- plays a master hacker who's furloughed from prison to help the U.S. and Chinese governments catch a mysterious super-hacker. The mystery hacker caught the world's attention by blowing up a Chinese nuclear facility and then wreaking havoc on the world's soy markets.

From that point on, the U.S. and China become reluctant collaborators. Hemsworth's Hathaway joins with a former MIT pal (Leehom Wang), a Chinese military officer who does high-level tech work. Wang's character brings along his sister (Wei Tang), who provides technical assistance and serves as a perfunctory love interest for Hathaway.

Who wouldn't fall in love while discussing the intricacies of RATs (remote administration tools)? Yes, the screenplay mentions RATs.

Viola Davis, who gives the movie's only interesting line reading, plays an FBI agent. She's trying to keep tabs on Hathaway, who's supposed to have rogue tendencies.

Why does the FBI even need Hathaway? It seems he created the malware used by the fiendish intruder as a digital springboard for his cyber crimes.

Mann shows us this computer hackery with images that explore the innards of various and assorted chips en route to their felonious destination. I guess we're supposed to be impressed.

Mann also uses many shots of people working at keyboards. If you don't believe that watching someone type is boring, come over some time. You can watch me tap away.

Mann, of course, includes the requisite chases and action set pieces, all set against a backdrop of massive indifference. Who really cares about any of this?

Hemsworth doesn't bring much to Mann's party: He seems to have given up on facial expressions in a performance that's as pulseless as the movie itself. Strands of hair dangle over Hathaway's face like inverted windshield wipers, some sort of fashion statement one supposes.

Maybe the whole idea of the Hathaway character was doomed from the outset: He's a guy who can write code and kick butt. The movie might have been more intriguing had Hathaway been shown to be better at using his brain than stomping his opponents.

Blackhat does its share of globe hopping, traveling to Hong Kong, Indonesia and Malaysia, but you may be too busy watching the screenplay trample logic to enjoy the movie's travelogue pleasures, many of which tend to be blood-splattered anyway.

Mann -- whose filmography (Heat, The Insider, Collateral and Manhunter) includes a fair share of strong work -- finds some energy in the movie's home stretch. It's too late. Blackhat already has established itself as a forgettable helping of January mush.